While watching the Palin interview, I kept getting distracted by how bad a job Charlie Gibson was doing. Lately, this seems to happen more and more.
I thought Evans and Novak did a great interview show, David Brinkley was really good, and Tim Russert was great. It seems all my favorites are dead or off the air. I can’t stand Charlie Rose, Leslie Stahl, or Steve Kroft. My current favorite is Brian Lamb, but I think that is mostly due to the format and the interviewees.
Is there anybody out there who you like?
Terry Gross of Fresh Air is an obvious candidate. Bob Edwards leaves me a little cold, but he’s popular with some.
Terry Gross is an excellent interviewer? Aside from her habit of turning every sentence into a question? She does tend to go apeshit on her guest if the subject is abortion? Aside from that quirk, however, you won’t find a better interviewer anywhere?
I’ve always thought that Bob Costas was the be interviewer around…personable, unaffected, knowledgeable.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
Terry Gross always sounds like she’s reading from a script. I have no idea if she is or not, but it sounds like she is. She rarely asks followup questions and almost always goes right to the next question without commenting on the response. I like interviews to be a little more open, spontaneous, and two-way. Not quite like a conversation, because there has to be structure and flow, but not 20 Questions like Gross does. Charlie Gibson seemed to be doing ok for the most part but he was acting very smug. To me it felt obvious that he didn’t like Palin.
In my opinion, Howard Stern is the best interviewer. He can make Lawrence Taylor cry, he can make senators speak candidly, he made it feel like Paul McCartney was sitting right next to you, and he can make just about anyone admit to things they promised themselves they wouldn’t admit to before they walked in the studio.
Terry Gross - the essence of many of her questions are thoughtful and things I would want to hear asked of the interviewee. Her answering in question form and other foibles can irritate, but are basically fine - I appreciate the questions.
Howard Stern - have to agree; he can be relentless and fun - but he is not a serious interviewer in the classic sense of the term
**Jon Stewart **- no mention yet? He clearly does his research and can improvise on the fly with the best of them in terms of framing questions and fielding ripostes. But 6 minutes ain’t enough time and Jon works in the Funny, which is very entertaining, but doesn’t lend itself to a substantive interview…
He is a serious interviewer when he has the right kind of guest on. You don’t get Arlen Spector, Buzz Aldrin, Paul McCartney, Barbara Walters, Donald Trump, Christine Todd Whitman, etc etc just by telling dick and fart jokes.
Agreed - Howard is entirely capable of Smart, but that is not the typical objective of his interviews…
I like Jimmy Kimmel. He comes out with questions sometimes that seem to step over a line. But, they are the questions you were wondering about during the interview. He asks them. Sometimes the person being interviewed gets a little surprised.
I thought Russert was over rated. He did not ask the tough question or follow it up well.
I liked Phil Donahue.
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now can be good sometimes. Her guests will represent the opposite side of the powerful .
What’s wrong with Charlie Rose? He is the first person that came to mind when I saw the thread title. Due to the luxury of time, I find that his interviews have more of a conversational feel.
When Stewart is on, especially when he’s angry, he’s very good. Unfortunately, sometimes he takes it easy on his guests, maybe to avoid earning a reputation for being unfair or maybe because it’s a comedy show.
I assumed he soft-pedaled some of his guests, especially ones that hold views different from what is normally espoused on the show, in order to keep that type of guest willing to come on the show - and because he is about entertaining more than hardcore journalism…
One of my favorite political interviewers is someone that most Americans have probably never heard of. His name is Kerry O’Brien, and he hosts a show called The 7:30 Report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
O’Brien is one of the few political interviewers i’ve seen who will actually say to a politician, “I’m sorry, but you’re not answering my question.” The biggest problem with political interviews is that the reporters will ask a specific question, but the politician will then “answer” it is such a way as to simply repeat the talking points that the politician wants to make. And very few interviewers are willing to push them for actual answers.
I know Tim Russert gets a lot of love in the US as a great interviewer, and i thought there were times when he was good, but i also thought that he often threw softballs, and that he was not persistent enough when people sidetracked his questions.
Howard Stern, hands down.
Yes! Later With Bob Costas was the best interview show I’ve ever seen. 22 minutes of conversation with one person. He would come up with questions so good that he’d make people I’d normally never want to listen to interesting. If the guest was particularly interesting or entertaining, they’d go two or even three nights. There was no monologue. The opening was “This is Later, I’m Bob Costas. Our guest tonight is…” Right into a question. After Costas left, it morphed into yet another lame late night talk show with a host monologue and all the nonsense.
If NBC wants to make their Hulu.com service genuinely useful, they’d add the entire run of Later With Bob Costas.
When I watch him, he seems to want everyone to know how smart he is more than he wants them to know about the interviewee. His questions are too long and he seems to be making them up on the spot.
I’ve definitely gotten the feeling he does this. I seem to recall seeing him give an incredibly softball interview to Trent Lott.
The best interviewers disappear and you focus only on the guest. The best interview I’ve ever seen on TV was one where a British journalist interviewed Princess Diana. He was very low key and had her talking very naturally and openly, and he would ask questions and then stay out of the way. She may have been predisposed to do so, but here was a guy who realized that *he *was not the star of the interview, that his job was to bring out Diana.
Charlie Gibson, since someone mentioned him, was just awful when he did the living-room style interview with Palin. He had an agenda, part of which was to make himself look like a hard-hitting journalist. He was better in the follow-ups where he reverted to Good Ol’ Friendly Charlie again.
Re. the interviewer “disappearing,” i completely disagree, at least for some types of interviews.
If the interview is some biographical or lifestyle thing, sure, whatever. But if it’s a political interview, then the consequence of the interviewer disappearing is that we only get to hear about the issues the way the politicians wants us to. That’s not what political interviews are about, or at least it’s not what they should be about.
I didn’t see Gibson’s interview with Palin, but if he asked tough questions and brought up issues that Palin would prefer to have avoided, then he did his job. And this would be true if he was interviewing Obama as well. Or any other political candidate.
I don’t know whether his agenda was " to make himself look like a hard-hitting journalist" (and neither do you, for that matter), but if he indeed came across as a hard-hitting journalist, then that’s good, not bad. People who just want “Good Ol’ Friendly” interviews with major political candidates don’t deserve democracy. Or, more accurately, they deserve the democracy they get.